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Revery   Listen
Revery

noun
(pl. reveries)
1.
An abstracted state of absorption.  Synonym: reverie.
2.
Absentminded dreaming while awake.  Synonyms: air castle, castle in Spain, castle in the air, daydream, daydreaming, oneirism, reverie.






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"Revery" Quotes from Famous Books



... eloquent eyes met hers. Blushing deeply, Jennie turned away and remained thoughtful and still, listening to the din of the waters and the wail of the autumn winds as they swept through the tree-tops, and her quiet revery brought the old expression of early maturity and care, for her thoughts had been roving all along her past life, and had left her amid her childhood's sorrows in the narrow dreary room, with the weary and forsaken ones, and none else to love and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... retained in the memory of the adult, who continues to think that he has actually experienced it. The same thing is true when children have intensely desired anything. Thus the child- stories given us by Rousseau, Goethe, and De Quincey, must come from the airy regions of the dream life or from waking revery, and Dickens has dealt with this dream life in "David Copperfield.'' Sully adds, that we also generate illusions of memory when we assign to experiences false dates, and believe ourselves to have felt, as children, something we experienced later ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... The loud man, who talks with the intention of being overheard, is the same egotist elsewhere. If there was any justice in Iago's sneer, that there were some "so weak of soul that in their sleep they mutter their affairs," what shall be said of the walking revery-babblers? I have met men who were evidently rolling over, "like a sweet morsel under the tongue," some speech they were about to make, and others who were framing curses. I remember once that, while walking behind an apparently respectable old gentleman, he suddenly ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... roused from his revery by the clatter of approaching hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... quiet, lost in revery. She, following his mood, spoke less and less; and when Jane returned, late at night, escorted by a tall, bronzed young ranchman, she found them sitting in silence in a half-light, staring into the late ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam

... will have the 'crow's nest' lowered and let you go up in it if you like," was the startling announcement which roused her from her revery. ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... looking at her as if the present did not reach his senses. "I knew hands were touching me. I reckon I was not dead. I knew about them soon as they began, only I could not interfere." He waited again. "It is mighty strange where I have been. No. Mighty natural." Then he went back into his revery, and lay with his eyes still full open upon her where she ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... he fell into a long revery, and his concluding thoughts were: "I doubt whether Marian understands herself in respect to this young fellow. She is too resentful. She does not feel the indifference which she seeks to maintain. The subtle, and, as yet, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... rather haughty-looking girl of sixteen, but, as I had noticed, very much devoted to her parents. At this moment she was running her hand through her father's hair, while he was rousing himself from his revery to answer her question. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... tall, brass-handled secretary with its secret drawer, which Dorris called so tantalizing, because she had no secret to hide in its depths, and the eight-day clock ticking away in the corner, which now struck the hour, waking Dorris from her revery into words:— ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... revery, with certain tableaux glowing along its perspectives which poor little Susan Posey would have shivered to look upon, if they could have been transferred from the purple clouds of Myrtle's imagination to the pale silvery mists ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... I first had spoken to her, should thoughts of this strange and ragged maid have so possessed me that each day my memory of her returned, haunting me, puzzling me, plaguing my curiosity till imagination awoke, spurring my revery to the very border of an unknown land where rides Romance, in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... in jubilant chorus, and the air grew still and deliciously cool and fragrant. When at last the full moon rose over the Beacon Mountains there was not a cloud above the horizon, and Nature, in all her shower-gemmed and June-clad loveliness, was like a radiant beauty lost in revery. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... hearing in fancy the disparaging remarks of the bystanders, and when it was all over and the reaction came, she made up with the object of her passion by being unusually sweet to her and even became solicitous about her health as fearing that her revery might come true. We all too remember Tolstoi's reminiscences when, having been flogged by his tutor, he slunk off to the attic, weeping and broken-hearted, and finally after a long brooding resolved to run away ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... when Leah parted so sadly from her husband, she went at once to her lodging place, and quickly prepared the tempting evening meal. After she had gone, Emile, once more alone, crouched down in a corner of his shadowy cell, and was lost in sorrowful revery, till the jailer, unheeded, opened the cell-door and handed in ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, an ardent life, a profound passion. He kept them fixed incessantly on the gypsy, and, while the giddy young girl of sixteen danced and whirled, for the pleasure of all, his revery seemed to become more and more sombre. From time to time, a smile and a sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... existence. No doubt it was this that had caused Mrs. Poyntz's harsh judgment against the wisdom of my choice. But such chiller shade upon Lilian's charming nature was reflected from no inert, unamiable self-love. It was but the consequence of that self-absorption which the habit of revery had fostered. I cautiously abstained from all allusion to those visionary deceptions, which she had confided to me as the truthful impressions of spirit, if not of sense. To me any approach to what I termed "superstition" was displeasing; any indulgence of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of the little room and, under cover of it, I approached the table and tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to my chair in the comer. Eliza seemed to have fallen into a deep revery. We waited respectfully for her to break the silence: and after a ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... light dances on the wall; my mother's hand is on my head; my sister's eyes are beaming on her lover over in the darker corner; there is a murmur of pleasant voices; there are quiet mirth and deep joy. I lose myself in revery when I think of these pleasures, and almost ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... revery into which I had unconsciously fallen by a hoarse voice at my elbow repeating a Pater Noster, and turning around, I beheld the jovial Friar of Copmanhurst, one hand grasping a huge oaken cudgel, the other ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... a scanty return for intense toil. His countenance was handsome, and would have been rather gay than thoughtful in its expression, but for that vague and abstracted dreaminess of eye which so usually denotes a propensity to revery and contemplation, and betrays that the past or the future is more congenial to the mind than the enjoyment and action ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... morning I was up and at work, reading, correcting and embellishing my letter before I could well distinguish a word. About nine o'clock, while I was rehearsing aloud in the very heat of oratory, two chairmen knocked at my door and interrupted my revery: they were come to take away the trunk of Turl. The thought struck me and I immediately inquired—'Is the gentleman himself here?' I was answered in the affirmative, and I requested one of the men to go and inform him ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... something in the way of mental training. The chances are, moreover, that the harm done by doing the wrong thing first was not to be compared to the harm of giving way to his doubt, and either drifting into a state of ineffective revery or fretting himself into a frenzy ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... necessities of life, such as Pullman cars and taxicabs and electric radiators and non-storage chickens and unsalted butter concern the great mass of the saints, who would find them the rarest luxuries, and could hardly be imagined coveting them; and then from this wild revery he fell to asking himself whether a Pullman train would be such a great advance or advantage over the old-fashioned European first-class carriages in which he had been so long content to travel with the native nobility. Self-brought to book on ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... had changed from irritation to one of absorbed attention. "So he has thought of that, also!" and he fell into a moment's revery. "Very well, Lepine," he added. "I believe that you are right. I will arrange for the President to open the sitting, and I will summon the man who ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... evening, and the Poet seemed lost in revery as he gazed on the dying light. His hand rested tenderly on the shoulder of a dark but brilliant woman, who loved him with the strength of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... infinitely tender, a mouth of witty—nay, perhaps cutting—repartee of brevity and force. A lady who spoke quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely. A person who commanded by nature and yet (dare I venture the thought?) was capable of a supreme surrender. I was aroused from this odd revery by footsteps on the gallery, and Nick burst into the room. Without pausing to look about him, he flung himself lengthwise on the bed on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the most villanous-looking—" but she broke off the sentence and stood for a moment in revery. We were in the darkened passage, and Dorothy had taken my hand. That little act in another woman of course would have led to a demonstration on my part, but in this girl it seemed so entirely natural and candid that it was a complete bar to undue ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... angle worm from the ground, and a little farther on, under a blossoming apple tree, the kitchen cat was breakfasting on a baby robin. The double spectacle struck me as significant of life. I was casting about for some philosophical truths to fit it, when my revery was interrupted by a ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... roused from his revery and for a long time contemplated the quiet, thoughtful lad who sat beside him. Gradually a deep concern spread across his comfortably aged features, a presentiment of impending loss shadowed his pleasant eyes. He reached out to lay his hand ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... the trial Guayos had aroused from his revery, had turned from the window, and had fixed his eyes steadily on Morelos, who was seated among the lawyers in the centre of the room. Morelos returned the gaze calmly for a time; then he frowned and turned the pages of a law-book. After a little he moistened his lips with his tongue, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... a revery, she caught him in the act, regarding her with earnest eyes, and with a frown. He also came back to earth—or to the boat—suddenly, and he observed a slight movement of her eyebrows as in surprise or disapproval. With a guilty air, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... man was apparently lost in revery, looking out over the river toward Camden. He was plainly dressed in coat and trousers of some coarse weave. His shirt, partly unbuttoned under the great white sweep of his beard, was of gray flannel. His boots were those of a man much accustomed ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... eyes. His paganism soared that night and when she faded out like a gray ghost down the road, a deep singing came out of the fields and filled his way homeward. All night the summer moths flitted in and out of Amory's window; all night large looming sounds swayed in mystic revery through the silver grain—and he lay ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... dedicated to the Sun, and their exhalations were supposed to inspire with prophecy, and to breathe of the god. The gloom of caverns, naturally the brooding-place of awe, was deemed a fitting scene for diviner revelations—it inspired unearthly contemplation and mystic revery. Zoroaster is supposed by Porphyry (well versed in all Pagan lore, though frequently misunderstanding its proper character) to have first inculcated the worship of caverns [37]; and there the early priests held a temple, and primeval philosophy its retreat [38]. Groves, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... between marshaled banks, which it has covered with sand; in the midst of the waters may be seen the moss-grown piles of a ruined bridge. One is at ease here, and yet at the bottom of the heart a vague unrest is felt; the soul is softened and loses itself in melancholy and tender revery. Suddenly the clock strikes, and one is forced to go and prepare himself to eat his soup between ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great, stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this,—he was always there;—first in the morning, ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville

... from the ole man. Dark doin's by one's own flesh and blood. Go on! go on! Don't mind me." Flip did not reply. She had even lost the interest in her old dress. Perhaps it had only touched some note in unison with her revery. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... changes of a thousand years, all these the old tree had seen, and I respected her dry dusty old feet and wuz sorry for 'em. And I reveryed on the subject more'n half the way home, and couldn't help it. Anyway my revery lasted till jest before we got to the big gate of the ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... his agreeable revery. This wouldn't do. He was becoming smug. Reaction brought the inevitable note of alarm. Suppose his audience tired of him. Suppose he lost them. Chastened, he realised what his audience meant to him—these thousands of unknown people whose minds he titivated, whose reason ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... of his inferiority, Oscar sat down on a stone post, lost in a revery which did not allow him to perceive that his trousers, drawn up by the effect of his position, showed the point of junction between the old top of his stocking and the new ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... from his revery by the voice of Faria, who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the abbe unusual ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... closely allied, and, indeed, overlapping form of auto-erotism which may be considered here: I mean that associated with revery, or day-dreaming. Although this is a very common and important form of auto-erotism, besides being in a large proportion of cases the early stage of masturbation, it appears to have attracted little ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Madame de Beaumont's heroines! I can picture all the situations so vividly that I really believe all these adventures will happen to me. I must confess that Barbara's marriage has much more inclined me to revery. She blamed such wanderings of the fancy, and always hindered my reading romances; but to make up for lost time, madame makes me read a great deal, and the more I read, the more does my imagination lose ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... preceded his execution, and, as he thought of the awful situation of his family, he threw himself into his chair and buried his face in his hands, and for two hours remained in that attitude immovable. He was roused from his painful revery by the entrance of the officers to conduct him to the bar of his judges, from whom he was aware he could expect no mercy. "I follow you," said the king, "not in obedience to the orders of the Convention, but because my enemies are the more powerful." ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony—the bed of death. I listened in an agony of superstitious terror—but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse—but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... she does, by this time," said Ludlow. He roused himself from a moment of revery, and added, "But I didn't intend to oppress you with this. I want ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... eyes dilating, then with a joyous snort and two or three exuberant plunges, with streaming mane and tail he tore away northward, and went careering over the prairie. Miss Sanford, seated near her window in an arm-chair—and a revery, heard the thunder of hoofs, and ran to see what it meant. She stood some minutes watching Dandy racing riderless over the springy turf before she knew that Grace, too, was by her side gazing from the same window. If ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... her work, but it was interrupted every now and then by strange fits of abstraction and revery, an unusual thing for this bustling and practical spinster. But then there are few of us but have had our hopes and dreams, and it would be unfair to think that Miss Hester was an exception. For once she ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... satisfaction, for Peace had become so engrossed with her new amusement that she never heard the door-bell ring, nor the voice of the visitor in the adjoining room, but scribbled away energetically until words failed her, and she paused to think of something to rhyme with "bird." Then her revery came to a sudden end, for through the open door of the parlor floated the words, "And so we decided to adopt ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... handsome, fascinating, and with abundant means for herself, she has been in no hurry to change her state in life. But Grandon Park and its owner look as tempting this morning as they did in her twilight revery last evening. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... one of them whose slowing feet had turned into the Sundown Trail. Kayak's hand, loosely holding his cooling pipe, rested on his knee. His sombrero backed his strong, bearded face, which had taken on the serenity of the evening. His deep eyes were calm with revery. As she gazed the girl's heart was flooded with a pitying tenderness for him, for Kayak Bill who, because of something buried deep in his past, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... rousing herself from her revery. "Nay, yo' must na say that, Liz. If it pleases yo' it conna do no hurt; I'm glad ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing Presence near me. And I fell into a half-revery, in which the hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... days there came a change in Grace. She was as cordial as ever, as gently considerate as ever, but she seemed to lose vivacity. She was often lost in revery; a sadder smile seemed to give expression to her face; she did not laugh with the old ringing laugh; there seemed to come in her look when she suddenly encountered Sedgwick, something which was the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... passed over it that afternoon, the road had changed, responsive to twilight and the coming dark. Nicholas knew it in all its phases, from the dawn of spring, vocal with the peeping of frogs, to the revery of winter, the silence of snow, and a hopeful glow in the west. Just here, by the barberry bush at the corner, he had stood still under the spell of Northern Lights. That was the night when his wife lay first in Tiverton churchyard; and he remembered, as a part of the strangeness and wonder ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown



Words linked to "Revery" :   dream, brown study, abstractedness, dreaming, reverie, abstraction



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